Here’s a little secret if you plan to buy tickets for the huge Powerball lottery drawing this weekend: Some Powerball numbers turn out to be winners much more often than other numbers.
That’s the word from LottoNumbers.com, a lottery website that has analyzed every winning number since the popular Powerball game began in 1992.
Even though math experts say the odds are exactly the same for each number to get drawn on any given night — because the selection process is random and there’s a precise number of balls in the lottery bin — the reality is some numbers pop out more frequently than others.
In the Powerball game, there are 69 balls in the main bin, with five getting drawn, and 26 red “Powerballs” in the secondary bin, with one of those getting drawn. Based on those numbers, the true statistical odds of matching all six winning numbers are 292,201,338 to 1 for a single $2 Powerball ticket.
During the past seven years — between Oct. 7, 2015 and Nov. 2, 2022 — these five numbers have been drawn most often in the main pool of white balls (five are selected in each drawing) in the Powerball lottery game, according to data from LottoNumbers.com.
- 61 — Drawn 78 times.
- 32 — Drawn 77 times.
- 63 — Drawn 73 times.
- 21 — Drawn 73 times.
- 69 — Drawn 71 times.
A few other numbers have also popped up more often than other numbers in Powerball drawings during the past seven years, including 23 and 36 (each drawn 70 times), 39 and 62 (drawn 69 times), 59 (drawn 68 times), and 20 (drawn 66 times).
Luckiest red Powerball numbers
These are the luckiest red numbers drawn during the past seven years, according to LottoNumbers.com. (Only one red ball, known as the “Powerball,” is selected during each drawing, after the five main balls are picked.)
- 24 — Drawn 45 times.
- 18 — Drawn 42 times.
- 4 — Drawn 36 times.
- 13 — Drawn 34 times.
- 21 — Drawn 34 times.
Three different red balls have each been drawn from the bin 33 times during the past seven years: 6, 10 and 26.
(NJ.com/lottery)
